Howie Roseman’s Biggest Strength Is The Cowboys Weakness

I will admit to not being as high on Howie Roseman as many Eagles fans. He is a very good GM, but I do think he has some flaws that get ignored by fans. There is something he is better at though than any GM in the league. That thing looks even better when you look at the Cowboys. The recent massive deal signed by Trevor Lawrence exposes it even more.

Trevor Lawrence just became the richest player in the NFL, at least on a per-year basis. He is far from the best player in the NFL, but because he is the latest QB to be paid, he is also the richest.

That is how it works. The newest guy up for his contract gets paid the most. Howie Roseman understands that, and gets contracts done early. The Cowboys? not so much.

Related: The Top 11 Most Impactful Free Agent Signings Made By Howie Roseman

The Cowboys, are consistently behind the 8-ball when it comes to extending their own players. Dak Prescott, Cee Dee Lamb, and Micah Parsons are all awaiting an extension. They are also all understandably unhappy that they have not been paid yet.

But really, they should be happy. They are going to be paid more now. The problem for the Cowboys is the more they wait, the more those prices go up. Meanwhile, Howie Roseman has spent the last two offseasons locking his players up early.

He sets the market. Howie doesn't let other teams set it for him. He signed DeVonta Smith and AJ Brown earlier than he had to. Neither were going to be free agents. Both WRs had two more years under contract, including the 5th year option for Smith. He could have used the franchise tag to make it 3 years for 1 of them. But he paid them early.

What happened after he did that? Other WRs signed even bigger deals. AJ Brown held the record for highest-paid WR for a whole month before Justin Jefferson broke it.

The Devonta Smith deal looks more and more like a bargain with every subsequent WR. Smith became the 4th highest-paid WR when he signed that deal. He is already down to 8th. Once JaMarr Chase and Cee Dee Lamb get paid, he will likely be 10th. By the end of the deal, he very well could be outside the top 20.

Jalen Hurts signed the biggest contract in NFL history when they extended him before last season. Is he the best QB in the league? No. So at the time, you could have said it was an overpay. He is now down to 6th. That could become 8th or even 9th once Jordan Love, Tua Tagovailoa, and Dak get paid. By the end of his deal, he will be outside of the top 10.

He set the market with Landon Dickerson too. The $21 million AAV leads all Guards. But with how much of it is tied into bonuses, he is actually only 7th. As more guards get paid, it will fall even more. Jordan Mailata is currently 4th among Left Tackles, but you know future LTs will push him down that list.

Howie Roseman is consistently ahead of the curve, while the Cowboys are always behind it. Credit needs to go to Jeffrey Lurie too. He is the one willing to pay for it. Jerry Jones is cheap and wants to string his best players along. But it only ends up costing him more. We saw it with Zeke, and we saw it with Dak the first time.

Yet here are the Cowboys, dragging their feet with all of their star players. Cee Dee Lamb is going to get paid. He will be paid more than they would have had to pay if they took care of the deal last year when he was first eligible. He will also be paid more than he would be if they paid him at the start of this offseason.

The same goes for Dak. Now maybe they actually plan on moving on from DAk. It wouldn't be the worst idea given his playoff performance. The problem is they are not exactly in a good spot to replace him. They are cap strung, and are never bad enough to have a prime pick to get a good QB.

Dak, as flawed as he is, might be their best option. But because Jerry Jones is pinching pennies, they are going to end up paying him more if they want to keep him.

Also, unlike Jeff Lurie, Jerry is not willing to give huge bonuses up front to soften the cap hit. So when Dak gets $56 million per year, it might actually cost them $56 million against the cap. The Hurts cap hit meanwhile doesn't get crazy until 2027. Even then, it is $41 million, which likely won't even be a top-10 cap hit that season.

Next, we will see it with Lamb, Parsons, and Dak. They will either lose those players or pay them more than the original asking price. Whenever Dak signs, it has to beat the Trevor Lawrence deal, because Dak is better than Lawrence. When Lamb signs, he might have to beat the Brown deal. Lamb isn't better than Brown, they are probably close to even. But Lamb will be paid like he is better.

So thank you Howie Roseman, and Jeffrey Lurie, for consistently doing these things the right way. Not only for taking care of their players before it comes to them holding out but for actually saving money in the long run by doing so.

Also thank you Jerry Jones for being so cheap. Year after year he proves he has no clue how to operate a team in the cap era. There is a reason the Cowboys have been irrelevant for most of the cap era. There is also a reason why despite there being only 1 Super Bowl, the Eagles have mostly been a successful team.

Jeffrey Lurie, and by extension Howie Rosman, get it. Jerry Jones does not.

Has anyone ever gone from hated to beloved faster than Howie Roseman? A few years ago, some Eagles fans were ready to drive him out of town. Now, those same Eagles fans are ready to erect a statue for him.

His time in Philly has been at times tumultuous. There have been some major draft busts like Jalen Reagor, Derek Barnett, Sidney Jones, JJ Arcega Whiteside, and Davion Taylor, just to name a few.

At one point during the Chip Kelly era, he was banished to a broom closet. Yet he managed to stick around. He managed to survive the demotion and a few major mistakes. He helped build the first-ever Eagles roster to win the Super Bowl. And now, he has this current team in a position to make it back and win it again.

His draft history is up and down. We mentioned the busts he has had over recent years. But lately, he has been way better in that aspect. Howie has drafted stars Devonta Smith, Landon Dickerson, Jalen Carter, and now you can add Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean to that mix.

It represents a change in philosophy where he has stopped trying to be the smartest man in the room, and he is just taking players everyone thinks are talented.

But drafting is just one way to add talent. You can also obviously sign or trade for players. And this week marks the trade deadline, the last chance for teams to add to their roster this season. Howie Roseman has been one to make a big splash. Will he this year? Maybe not, the eagles might be thinking smaller this time.

But ahead of the trade deadline, let's take a look back at some of the great trades Howie has made with the Eagles.

What is better than trading up to get a great player like Devonta Smith? Robbing your division rival of a chance to get the player. It's a move he has made before when he jumped the Cowboys to take Dallas Goedert in 2018. But this time he worked with the Cowboys to steal Devonta Smith from the Giants. After years of very little talent at WR, the Eagles finally had someone with Star Power.

They just signed him to an extension, 2 years before they actually had to. He has proven to be a true WR1, even while sharing targets with AJ Brown.

Even after getting Devonta Smith, the Eagles still had a big need at WR. Many people were projecting the Eagles to use one of their 3 1st round picks in 2022 to take yet another WR. Howie had a different plan. Why draft a young guy who may or may not be good when you can go out and get an established star at WR? Howie sent the Titans the 18th pick, and a 3rd round pick, and in return got one of the best WRs in the league.

They immediately signed him to a 4-year extension. This off-season they signed him to another extension. Now he is here for the long haul, and he has a chance to go down as the best WR in Eagles history. Meanwhile, the Titans have been a mess since he left.

Similar to WR, the Eagles had been desperately searching for a star-caliber CB for a while. Even that Super Bowl year, they were not exactly stocked in the secondary besides Malcolm Jenkins at Safety. They won with guys like Jalen Mills and Ronald Darby. It quickly caught up to them in the following years. So when Slay was trying to get out of Detroit due to a spat with then-head Coach Matt Patricia, Howie pounced.

The Eagles got an All-Pro Caliber Corner, and all they had to give up was a 3rd and 5th-round pick. Even now at an older age, he is still going up with guys like Ja'marr Chase and looking pretty good while doing so.

Sometimes Howie’s great moves have nothing to do with acquiring talent. Like in the 2021 draft. Howie traded down from pick 6 to pick 12 with the Dolphins, getting the Dolphins 1st round pick the following year. It’s the pick that would eventually turn into Jordan Davis. A move we do not have clear answers about. But the trade-down itself was a genius move.

Even after trading down from 6 to 12, they still got a guy, Devonta Smith, who everyone would have been happy with at pick 6. Well done Howie.

This trade was weird, and I still don’t fully understand what the Saints got out of this. At one point the Eagles had 3 picks in the first round of the 2022 draft. But they wound up with 2 after they swapped a ton of picks with the Saints. The Saints wound up having two 1st round picks in 2022, but they gave up a lot to get that. There were a lot of moving parts, but here is what each team got back.

The Eagles pretty much just gave up one 1st and moved a few picks down with another. And in return, they got Jalen Carter, and that 2nd round pick turned into Cooper DeJean. The Saints were trying to bet on themselves and failed. They ended up taking the bad end of the deal giving up two 1st round picks far more valuable than the two picks they got back, and throwing in a 2nd round pick for good measure.

Yes, it wound up being only a rental, and then he came back a year later. But that rental was a huge boost in the 2022 season. CJ Gardner Johnson was a playmaking machine that season having a league-leading 6 interceptions despite missing time. he was such a huge part of that defense that helped them get to the Super Bowl.

Ajayi is not a star like Brown or Slay. But his addition brought an extra element to the team that finally won the first Super Bowl in Eagles history. Would they have won it without him? Who knows. But the Eagles needed some help at RB, and Howie was not shy about going out to get it. He sent a 4th round pick to the Dolphins and got back a guy who put over 400 yards for them the rest of the way.

Somehow, someway, the Eagles both offloaded an angry Sam Bradford and got a 1st and 4th round pick back in 2016. The Vikings were desperate for QB help after Tedd Bridgewater suffered a season-ending injury, and Howie cashed in. In one fell swoop he replaced one of the 1st round picks they used to trade up for Carson Wentz and opened up the starting spot for Carson Wentz by getting rid of Sam Bradford.

He did go on to waste that pick on Derek Barnett. But the 4th round pick turned into Josh Sweat who turned out very well for them.

That is not the only example of Howie getting a lot back for a QB they didn't even want. When Wentz’s time had run its course in Philly, there was not a lot of optimism Howie would get much back. But he worked his magic and got a conditional 1st round pick. Thankfully, those conditions were satisfied, and he turned into one of the 3 1st rounders they had in 2022.

They sent that pick to the Saints, and got a haul. They made a lot of other trades with the picks they got back, which makes what they got back for Wentz a bit complicated. Going through all the eventual trades would take a whole article of its own. But all of these players were acquired with picks connected to that original trade of Wentz.

Pretty good haul for a guy who is now a backup in the league.

Before the Eagles moved up to pick 2 to get Carson Wentz, they made another move to get from 13 to 8. What did they have to give up to get there? Two players they were already trying to get rid of. Kiko Alonso and Byron Maxwell. It not only moved them 5 picks up in the draft but got rid of the bad contract they had just given Byron Maxwell. Not sure what the Dolphins were thinking.

To go from 8 down to 13 and only get two struggling overpaid veterans back. But thank you Dolphins, and thank you Howie.